This invention relates in general to the field of telecommunications, and more particularly to a system and method for identifying an unidentified customer at the point of sale.
Many commercial and other establishments identify customers or other persons at the point of sale to allow an informed decision to be made regarding whether to provide goods, services, or other benefits to these customers or persons or to take some other appropriate action. For example, a commercial establishment might elect to allow a customer to purchase, rent, otherwise receive, or order a good, service, or benefit on credit or at a discount based on an identification of the customer made at the point of sale.
As identification and identity verification procedures become more advanced to serve various needs, commercial or other establishments may identify customers or other persons at the point of sale using a variety of techniques. A known technique for identifying a customer includes receiving a personal identification number (PIN), account number, or other identifier associated with the customer, either verbally or using a magnetic card reader, and comparing the number or identifier with previously stored information to verify the identity of the customer. Such techniques are wholly inadequate if the customer loses his card or has it stolen, cannot remember his number or identifier, or is otherwise unable to provide the requisite information. Furthermore, such techniques are burdensome to both the customer and the establishment in that the customer must remember the number or identifier, or carry with him a card, and the establishment must devote employee resources to the identity verification process. Moreover, although these techniques may be acceptable in some circumstances to verify the identity of customers that have already been identified, these techniques do not identify an unidentified customer out of a universe of known customers. These and other disadvantages and problems make previous techniques for identifying customers inadequate for many applications.
The present invention addresses disadvantages and problems associated with previous systems and methods for identifying customers.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, a system for identifying an unidentified customer at the point of sale includes a database containing utterance data that corresponds to a known customer. A processing system coupled to the database receives utterance information that corresponds to the unidentified customer and compares the utterance information with the utterance data to identify the unidentified customer as the known customer. In response, the processing system may automatically retrieve stored information corresponding to the known customer.
The present invention provides a system and method for identifying an unidentified customer at the point of sale that does not merely verify the identity of the customer, but identifies the unidentified customer from among a universe of known customers. The system and method of the present invention identifies the unidentified customer at the point of sale without requiring the customer to remember a PIN, account number, or other identifier, or to physically provide a card containing this information in magnetic form, and may be used in a variety of commercial and other settings. The present invention therefore improves the efficiency, increases the accuracy, and decreases the burden associated with the customer-identification process. Furthermore, the present invention may be self-learning, such that the likelihood of identifying a particular unidentified customer may increase each time the customer interacts with the system.